'This Week' Transcript: WH Sr Adviser Valerie Jarrett

March 28, 2010

Page 7 of 16

Marshall poll from your state says that Pennsylvanians view President
Obama, more of them, unfavorably than favorably for the first time. No
offense, you're not doing much better. Democrats in the Keystone State
have a tough road ahead of them. Doesn't this bill hurt their chances
in November?

RENDELL: No, I think as the months roll by, it will actually help
our chances. As more and more people get to understand what's in this
bill, people are going to like it. As someone who's got a 25-year-old
daughter at home who can't get health coverage understands that they can

right now, they're going to like the bill. When someone has a child who

gets ill in September and all of a sudden the insurance company can't
deny them coverage, they're going to like the bill. Small businesses,
businesses under 25 employees, they can file for tax credits that will
help them substantially now. They're going to like the bill. So as all

of these benefits roll out, Jake, it's going to change public perception

of the bill and of the president himself.

And look, no one is kidding themselves. It's a tough year for
incumbents, whether it's the president of the United States, it's the
governor, it's mayors. It's a tough year for incumbents. When the
economy is bad, it's always the case. But this bill is going to be like

Social Security and Medicare, that were demonized, demonized when they
were passed, but later went on to be a godsend to American seniors. And

I think that you will find that that's what this will happen as we roll
out.

And I think losses in November are going to be a lot less than most

of the prognosticators are foretelling.

TAPPER: Governor Barbour, there was some good news for Democrats in

the Washington Post poll that I wanted to ask you about. And it does
suggest that maybe the party, according to some critics, miscalculated,
both in terms of policy, by walking away -- there aren't as many
Republican ideas in the bill -- and politics. Just listen to these
numbers. In February, on the generic ballot, Republicans led Democrats
48 percent to 45 percent, but now, after the bill has passed, the
Democrat leads 48 percent to 44 percent. Doesn't that suggest that
maybe your party miscalculated, both in terms of the fact that the law
is now the law of the land and probably -- let's not kid ourselves -- it

will be for a long, long time -- and in terms of the politics, in terms
of the fact that this is not hurting Democrats as much as you thought it

would.

BARBOUR: Well, in fact, I think Ed's got it just backwards. You
mentioned to Valerie Jarrett, we've now learned that big corporations
are going to have to take $14 billion worth of write-offs, according to
the Towers Watson (ph) estimate, $14 billion worth of write-offs that
nobody knew about, and that's how many jobs are those $14 billion of
losses on corporate balance sheets, how many jobs are they going to
cost? We're going to learn a lot more about this deal. We're learning
already where they said that small businesses that didn't cover their
employees would have to pay $750 per employee. Now it turns out when
you read the bill, if you have the average employee in Mississippi who
makes $32,000 a year, if the cost of health insurance is more than
$3,000 for that employee, the small business will have to pay $3,000,
not $750, four times as much.